Students, faculty react to Brightspace
The USC community did not prefer Brightspace to Blackboard in online survey.
By CHERRY WU & TALIA WEXLER
Brightspace was meant to be an upgrade from Blackboard, but after using the new Learning Management System, USC students, staff and faculty are not completely satisfied with the platform’s functionality.
In a Daily Trojan survey with 86 student, staff and faculty respondents, 46.5% of respondents said they did not prefer Brightspace over Blackboard, 23.3% of respondents said they did and 30.2% said they did not have a preference between the platforms.
USC switched its course content from Blackboard to Brightspace at the start of Summer 2024, but most students didn’t use the platform until Fall 2024 courses commenced. The new LMS was selected by the USC LMS Assessment Committee, which ranked Brightspace as the highest among the course content platforms it tested in the areas of communication, customer support, course creation, exams, grading and accessibility.
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Part of what makes Brightspace more difficult to use is the lack of familiarity faculty have with it. The University had several training programs during summer. Non-tenured professors typically have nine-month contracts and the University did not offer compensation for them to enroll in the training.
Trina Gregory, associate professor of information technology practice, said she believes if USC offered compensation it could’ve helped more faculty master the LMS in advance.
Gregory also said while it has taken some time for her to learn how to customize Brightspace to her liking, there are certain aspects of the platform — like the user interface — that she prefers over Blackboard.
“The general UI — user interface — is much better than Blackboard,” Gregory said. “Even how we got to the gradebook and how the students got to the gradebook and saw [their grades], was difficult.”
Seungmin Han / Daily Trojan
Overall, the visual appearance of the platform seems to be favored by students and faculty — 54.7% of survey respondents ranked the user interface of Brightspace at a 7 out of 10 or higher.
Lucas Brown, a junior majoring in geodesign, wrote in a Daily Trojan survey response that he believes Brightspace has better features than Blackboard in some aspects but is not a significantly better course content platform overall.
“[Brightspace] has some strengths over Blackboard (appearance, surface level layout) but is weaker than Blackboard in others (amount of features, navigation of course content),” Brown wrote. “Instead of a net upgrade, Brightspace seems to have traded different benefits with Blackboard while obtaining new weaknesses.”
He rated Brightspace’s user interface as an 8 out of 10, the user experience as a 5 out of 10 and the overall experience as a 7 out of 10. He ranked his overall experience with Blackboard slightly higher at an 8 out of 10.
For students and faculty alike, the new LMS system is a major adjustment.
“There is just this different paradigm of how we’re displaying our course content than we did before,” Gregory said. “We just have to get used to that.”
Kate Ariathurai, a senior majoring in industrial and systems engineering, said in an interview with the Daily Trojan that she struggles the most with Brightspace in her work as a teacher’s assistant for programming in Python.
Unlike Blackboard, Brightspace does not support previewing certain Python file types, so Ariathurai has to download the student submissions to her computer to view them. She said this is a time-consuming process.
“You used to be able to just preview the document without having to necessarily download it on your computer, take up space, so it [has] definitely made that process a lot more tedious,” Ariathurai said.
Ariathurai said it is difficult having to learn how to navigate a new LMS.
“It definitely feels like, ‘Oh, I’ve been doing this for three years and now I need to learn a new platform,’” Ariathurai said. “As user-friendly as it is, I definitely think it’s difficult to switch no matter what when you’re used to one thing.”
Shreeya Chand / Daily Trojan
For sophomores and juniors who had less time with Blackboard and will have more time with Brightspace, the change may feel less drastic.
Gillian Podell, a sophomore majoring in communication, said she prefers Brightspace over Blackboard and Google Classroom, the course content platform she used in high school.
“I don’t really know what other platforms would work,” Podell said. “I think I’m just very open to Brightspace right now, especially compared to Blackboard, which I did not like.”
Podell also said she prefers the app for Brightspace to Blackboard’s.
“[The app] it’s less glitchy, it’s easier to navigate and actually tells you what assignments there are and what’s coming up, at least if the professor can use it as well,” Podell said.
The University is currently offering one-on-one training for students, staff and faculty who need help navigating Brightspace. Instructors and teaching assistants are also eligible to register for Brightspace Bootcamps, which are four consecutive hour-long training sessions, or they can take the Brightspace Survivor’s Guide, which is an hour-long one-time training. Recorded trainings are available on the USC Brightspace Help website.
